Talk:Fire Emblem Engage/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Mike Christie (talk · contribs) 16:23, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

I'll review this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:23, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

• Comment - really doesn't feel like the prose is up to GA standards - lots of stand-alone sentences, lack of transition between thoughts, etc. Sergecross73 msg me 16:56, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

  Sergecross73, I haven't read through the article yet; I was about to when I saw your note. I see the nominator, ThePieMaster51, is a relatively new editor and hasn't nominated for GA before. I didn't pick this up to review out of any particular interest in it -- I'm just working on the GAN backlog. Are you interested in taking over the review? That would be fine with me. Otherwise I'm happy to carry on, and given your comment I'll probably look at the prose first. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:24, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

  No no, go for it. Didn't mean to step on your toes or anything, just wanted to through that out there as some input. It's an article on my watchlist because its a game of interest, but I just watch over it more to keep out vandalism or misguided edits, I have no intention of rewriting it or anything. Sergecross73 msg me 17:27, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

  You weren't stepping on toes -- I was just wondering if you were interested -- there are always more articles I can review. I'll get started; thanks for the input. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:31, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

Images are appropriately licensed. Earwig finds two sites with a lot of overlap, [1] and [2], but as far as I can tell both are copying from Wikipedia.

• What makes nintendo.wire.com a reliable source? The only discussion I can find about it was inconclusive.
• Per WP:VG/RS, destructoid.com is a blog and the individual contributor needs to be established as a reliable source, so is Chris Carter reliable?
• What makes inverse.com a reliable source? See this and this.

Will look at the prose next. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:52, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

I found a couple more sources for the Unity engine, but none seem reliable. Should I remove it? QuicoleJR (talk) 18:03, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

I can field some of these at least:

• NintendoWire is not generally seen as reliable. Its a run of the mill fansite.
• Chris Carter is one of the head editors at Destructoid so his output is generally deemed acceptable.
• Inverse is generally not seen as reliable. They're largely a churnalism output without much original thought - but that means its usually pretty easy to replace their sources with a better one. Sergecross73 msg me 18:03, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

Is Nintendo Everything a reliable source? If it is, this is proof of the game being made in Unity. QuicoleJR (talk) 18:12, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

It is not. I believe NintendoLife and Nintendo World Report are the only Nintendo-centric websites that are currently deemed usable. WP:VG/S is a great resource to keep all the community consensus straight. Sergecross73 msg me 18:37, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

In that case, I will just remove it. QuicoleJR (talk) 19:03, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

@Mike Christie: I removed the information sourced to Nintendo Wire and Inverse. QuicoleJR (talk) 19:08, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

OK, struck all points above. More shortly. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:32, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

@Mike Christie: Is there any way to credit this GA to me and ThePieMaster51? QuicoleJR (talk) 20:52, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

No, unfortunately there's no "nominator=" parameter in any of the GA templates after promotion, and the nomination template only allows a single nominator. The nomination template has a "note=" parameter that some people use to mention conominators, but that's just a text field and the GA statistics are going to record this as a GA nominated by ThePieMaster51. I've suggested that the {{GA}} and {{article history}} templates be changed to allow the recording of nominators, but so far I haven't had enough agreement to feel justified in making the change. You could try suggesting it at the talk page of the article history template, or at WT:GAN, and see if you can get consensus. Also, FYI, your ping to me didn't work -- you have to sign your post in the same edit as you do the ping, otherwise nothing happens. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:40, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

More comments:

• "A primary change from previous installments": what does "primary" mean here? "Major"? I see you use the phrase "primary mechanic" in the gameplay section; does that have a specific meaning in gaming?
• "While Fire Emblem Engage received generally positive reviews from critics, they were lower than its predecessor": I would avoid saying "lower", unless you explicitly want to reference review site scores in the lead, which I don't think would be a good idea. Something like "but it was not as well-received as its predecessor" would work.
• The "Gameplay" section relies a bit too much on the reader understanding the previous games. For example, it jumps right in to "The weapon triangle returns ..." but the reader hasn't been told yet that combat is part of gameplay. Take a look at a couple of other GAs -- Balan Wonderworld starts the gameplay section by saying it's a platform game, then gives the players' roles, then defines the gameplay area, and progression through it, and then starts giving elements of the gameplay. Or take a look at Kena: Bridge of Spirits -- again it starts with the game type, describes the player role and says there will be combat, and only then talks about weapons.\
• Similarly you mention that players can change classes, but you've said nothing about what the classes are.
• Another example: you mention "units" without ever saying how these are integrated in the game play. Do players control units? Are the units independent allies?
• I assume "stat bonus" refers to player stats? I looked in glossary of video game terms and found "stat point" defined; if that's the meaning, I would link to that definition in the glossary, at least.
• "lords of previous Fire Emblem games, like Marth and Celica": I think we need to give the reader a bit more information about why this is desirable -- were these allies in the previous games? Do they have special abilities or are they particularly powerful? Reading further I see a brief definition is given at the start of the plot section, but the reader shouldn't have to wait for that.
• The paragraph starting "There is a hidden set of numbers ..." is simultaneously a bit vague and too specific. Hidden numbers control everything in video games, after all, so pointing this out without giving an details isn't very useful. I think it would be better to say something like "When a character levels up, the increase in their stats depends partly on their character class and partly on ..." though I'm not clear on what the end to the sentence should say. "... partly on the character's experience"?
• "The player must also be mindful of which units they pair up to eat together." Why?
• "Additionally, after visiting a kingdom for the first time, the player can donate gold to that kingdom, the player to receive bonuses". Ungrammatical.
• "such as an increasing chance of finding Gold and Silver Corrupted": this doesn't mean anything to anyone unfamiliar with the franchise.
• "It is used to scan Amiibo for resources, as well as unique items": I think this needs a little more explanation too.
• What's a Paralogue?
• I wouldn't use "romance" as a verb, unless that's the verb used in the game, in which case I'd make that clear.
• The plot section is over 1,000 words. MOS:PLOT gives a guideline of 400-700 words for films; MOS:VG just says to be concise and avoid trivial details. This doesn't give us a hard limit but I do think this is a bit too long -- the overall word count for the article is under 3,000. The VG MoS also suggests merging the plot with the gameplay, which might avoid some of the problems I mention above about the order in which things are mentioned and explained.
• "One thousand years ago, the evil Fell Dragon Sombron appeared in Elyos and launched an invasion, but was defeated by the Divine Dragon Lumera. However, her child Alear was gravely wounded and placed into a slumber to save their life." It seems clear that Alear is Lumera's child but as written "her" is more naturally parsed as referred to Sombron, since Sombron is the subject of the most recent main verb.
• Also, just checking that the pronouns are deliberate -- Alear is "they" and Lumera is "she"? From a quick bit of googling it appears that you're doing this because they can be set to either gender for the game, which is fine, but it does read oddly -- as if she/he has made a pronoun choice, as people do.
• I'm still not clear if the player's character is Alear -- it seems from the lead that that must be the case, but it's not stated in the body.
• "Veyle reveals she is Sombron's daughter and Lumera's assassin, stealing all of the Emblem Rings and forcing Alear and their companions to flee for their lives ... They discover that Veyle has an evil split personality that is loyal to Sombron." Isn't this saying the same thing twice?
• "Meanwhile, two of the Hounds defect to Alear's side in order to save Veyle." This doesn't seem to make sense. The Hounds were fighting for Veyle; how does switching to fighting against her help save her?
• "Alear confronts Veyle and Sombron in Lumera's former castle, but Veyle breaks free of her brainwashing": "but" seems the wrong conjunction -- Veyle breaking free defuses the confrontation, it doesn't retaliate against it.
• "he is seemingly reunited with the Zero Emblem": I don't understand either "seemingly" or "Zero Emblem".
• Look for unnecessary words in the prose such as "additionally", "however", and "as such"; these can usually be deleted without harming the meaning, and usually that improves the flow.

Looking through the rest of the article, I agree with Sergecross73 that overall the prose is not up to GA standard. Here are few examples from a skim through:

• "According to Tsutomu Tei, game director from Intelligent Systems, Engage has story structure simplified compared to the previous title in the series, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, focusing in only one major goal so that players can focus on tactical gameplay." Several problems. Looks like there's a possessive pronoun missing in "has story structure"; "focusing in" is an odd usage; and "focus" is used twice in only a dozen words. And in fact it's used again in the next sentence.
• "discussing about the marriage system": ungrammatical.
• "for the direction of a flashy direction"
• "Due to the amount of detail and colors of Pikazo's art, the 3D model team had difficult to bring it to life in 3D, to the point it was suggested to use the 2D art for dialogues like in previous games in the series, but in the end the team was able make it closer to the original illustrations after a lot of hard work trying to make the models similar to it." Too long for a single sentence, and clumsily worded in places -- "had difficult to bring it to life" is just ungrammatical, and "Due to the amount of detail and colors of Pikazo's art" is oddly phrased -- why not something like "Pikazo's detailed and colorful art meant that..." or something simpler along those lines?

These are just examples, as I said. I'm going to fail this; I recommend shortening the gameplay and plot, and then a getting a copyedit done, before resubmitting. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:40, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

OK. I will work on that. It will hopefully be ready to resubmit in a couple of months. QuicoleJR (talk) 00:37, 28 April 2023 (UTC)